I’m 1/6 through a particular book, and for the most part, the author does a good job writing a coherent story. But there is one chapter that is a garbled mess. It sounds like these soldiers go up a butte 4 or 5 times without ever going down, or even hinting at *needing* to go down. And once they’re at the top, they go up again. And when they’re at the very top, they take an elevator to the top!?? And the top of the butte seems to change size from something that can barely accommodate a dropship, to something that can accommodate 2 whole opposing squads, with no explanation as to how the enemy squad got up there in the first place. The author also uses “butte”, “column”, and “pillar” in close succession to describe the scenery, but because it’s a scifi story, it’s not clear if these are descriptions of a natural formation, an artificial structure, or an artificial structure on top of a natural formation. While the presence of an elevator implies artifice, the butte *may* have been hollowed to accommodate the elevator. At the end of the chapter, all I could hope was that those events are not critically relevant later on.
by red_4
6 Comments
i stop reading the book and move onto something more coherent.
depending on how annoyed i am by the experience i may leave a ranty review.
Imagination.
I deal with it by not finishing it.
That was neuromancer for me. I had to read chapter by chapter online guide. It was terrible but I finish books on principle.
In your case it sounds like diagrams or those “anatomy” illustrations can help you understand better.
Name the book and page so we can judge whether the book is just written so horribly one cannot possibly picture it mentally or if your brain just farted.
it really depends on just how bad.
“Misuse of ‘and’ splicing” in sentences like “he put the key in the door and turned on the light” which literally imply his arms just phased through the door and reached inside the room to turn a switch while he unlocked the door but most native english speakers would understand is meant to describe a sequence, are different from me being genuinely unable to figure out what is going on.
There’s so many good books I’ll never get to read them all, I don’t waste time on bad ones.